aljazeera.com – Iran has started work on uranium metal-based fuel for a research reactor, the United Nations’ nuclear watchdog and Tehran said on Wednesday, in the latest breach of its nuclear deal with six significant powers as the country presses for a lifting of US sanctions. Kazem Gharib Abadi, Iran’s representative at the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), confirmed the …

gatestoneinstitute.org – Even if the deal negotiated in 2015 by the Obama administration were worth the effort, it is impossible to imagine the Iranians willingly recommitting to enrichment levels they have long since blown past. No one believes in their professed “peaceful use” of nuclear energy. So why does a return to the deal make any sense? The killing of …

Iranwire – Iran will receive its first shipment of vaccines from COVAX, the Word Health Organization’s initiative to ensure a more equitable distribution of coronavirus vaccine across the world, before spring arrives, an Iranian official has announced. Vaccinations of priority groups will start once the shipment is received, he added. On Monday, January 11, Mostafa Ghanei, chairman of the National …

Iranwire – Iran’s parliament has expressed confidence that the United Kingdom will pay the equivalent of $800 million to release jailed Iranian-British citizen Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, a new budget committee report has indicated. The report also stated that it will add the amount to its military spending. Iranian parliament’s Budget Consolidation Committee has announced that 20,000 trillion tomans [$800 m] will be added …

Radiofarda – The daughter of one of the founders of the Islamic Republic of Iran has raised a ruckus in Tehran by saying she would have preferred a second term for U.S. President Donald Trump. Faezeh Hashemi, the daughter of Iran’s former President Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, says she supported the Trump administration’s campaign of so-called “maximum pressure” against the …

Radiofarda – “Not only those on board but they also hit us all on that plane, all of us; tired parents, a brother who was devastated and overnight grew old. There is no happiness left in our house,” says Arezoo Ghaffouri Azar, the sister of Siavash Ghaffouri Azar, who was killed along with his wife, Sara Mamani, when the Islamic …

VOA – Outgoing Secretary of State Mike Pompeo says Iran is the new home base for the al-Qaida terrorist group.  Analysts paint a more complicated picture but agree Iran has long harbored senior al-Qaida members, noting that Iran will continue to pose a challenge for the incoming Biden administration. With VOA’s Persian Service contributing, VOA Diplomatic Correspondent Cindy Saine reports …

VOA – The United States has sanctioned two Iranian foundations controlled by Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the State Department said Wednesday, the latest move in a U.S. pressure campaign against Tehran in the last days of Donald Trump’s presidency. The Execution of Imam Khomeini’s Order (EIKO) and Astan Quds Razavi (AQR), allegedly enabled Iran’s elite to “control large portions …

(HRW) – Iranian authorities held a tight grip on peaceful activism during 2020, jailing lawyers, human rights defenders, and those who protested government corruption, mismanagement, and repression, Human Rights Watch said today in its World Report 2021.As the country grapples with controlling the spread of Covid-19, judicial and intelligence authorities have excluded dozens of human rights defenders and political prisoners from temporary release measures to …

CHRI – On January 9, 2021, a press report was published in Iran about the imminent execution of 29-year-old wrestler Mehdi Ali-Hosseini for a murder he allegedly committed five years ago. He was scheduled to be executed on January 10 but was granted a week to seek a pardon from the victim’s family and escape the gallows, his brother Hamzeh Ali-Hosseini told the Iranian Students News …